Contemporary reality is increasingly described as a waking dream. Indeed, the current media landscape echoes many of the characteristics of dreaming: an incessant flow of unlikely content and improbable associations—deepfakes, memes, documentary fragments, and artifacts of post-internet culture. Images and words merge on the retina, reaching the most hidden corners of the unconscious and connecting intimate and personal dimensions with clichés, fears, delusions, and collective rituals.
A defining feature of these media flows is their ability to reach our consciousness even before any form of critical evaluation or value attribution takes place. This may help explain the phenomenon of brainrot and the compulsive fascination with absurd and nonsensical content. Another common characteristic of these cultural artifacts is that many of them are generated through large-scale artificial intelligence models. This is far from trivial: it is precisely the material conditions produced by the AI industry that encourage the proliferation of imaginaries and aesthetics in which high levels of realism and plausibility converge with AI’s inherent tendency to mine online archives in search of clichés and recurring semantic patterns.
Under the title The World Is Sleepwalking, this year’s 21st edition of the MINE, YOURS, OURS festival unfolds as a delirious journey to the edges of the synthetic world, suspended between wakefulness and sleep, in an attempt to inhabit this state of algorithmic trance.
MINE, YOURS, OURS 2026
The World is Sleepwalking
Curated by Daniela Cotimbo
In collaboration with Re:humanism
WITH:
Zach Blas, Silvia Dal Dosso, Malpractice, Most Dismal Swamp
EXHIBITION
23 April – 14 May, 2026
☛ DRUGO MORE, Filodrammatica Gallery, Korzo 28/1, Rijeka
EXHIBITION OPENING:
Thursday, 23 April, at 8 p.m.
8:45 p.m. – All Inclusive AI Hell Cruise, performance by Malpractice
GALLERY OPENING HOURS:
Monday – Friday 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. | 5 – 8 p.m.
Saturday 5 – 8 p.m.
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PUBLIC TALKS
Friday, 24 April, 2026
☛ Filodrammatica, large hall, Korzo 28/1, Rijeka
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6 p.m. – Daniela Cotimbo introduces The World Is Sleepwalking
6:15 p.m. – Zach Blas, lecture
6:45 p.m. – Silvia Dal Dosso, Malpractice, Most Dismal Swamp, artist talk moderated by Davor Mišković
All the info here: https://drugo-more.hr/en/mine-yours-ours-2026/